The View From 1776

Science vs. Scientism

Socialism, of which liberal-progressivism is the American sect, is a gross misapplication of presumed science to inappropriate fields of human experience. 18th century socialists, progenitors of today’s socialism, were strongly influenced by Newton’s laws of motion and his equations measuring the effects of gravity. The Newtonian world, as they saw it (though Newton certainly didn’t see it that way) was matter set in motion and continuing so without the intervention of God, Whose existence was expressly denied.

The hubristic presumption of early modern socialists was that human political and social interactions were, as Newton’s universe, subject to laws of motion that the socialist elite alone were able to perceive. This is quintessential scientism, not science.

In the socialist and American liberal-progressive view, because only the elite professoriate were able to discern and apply the presumed laws of social and political interaction, it is both the prerogative and the duty of that elite to control and direct the daily behavior of the rest of us.

That deformation of our original constitutional ethos is brought into focus in Mark Hendrickson’s essay on the Forbes Website: